Category: How To Guides

In this digital era, where information technology has developed very fast, who doesn’t have social media account? It seems that we cannot live without checking social media in our phone several times or many times a day. Social media connect people from all over the world, through social media we could easily expand our friendship circle and reach out people from different countries. We can also use it to share information, to raise awareness of certain products or issues, and also use it as a platform to sell or buy stuff.

If you are going to promote your products online, social media is a perfect place to start it.

There are many marketing strategies you can apply to market the products you sell through social media, such as:

Marketing Through Facebook

Marketing Through Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social media in the world right now. It has impressive number of its active users, therefore it makes Facebook the most promising place for internet marketing. You can make Facebook Fans Page with interesting content to increase branding awareness of audiences to your business that will help to increase the sales. Alternatively, you can use Facebook Ads to advertise your products, and aim specific target audiences.

Marketing Through Youtube

Marketing Through Youtube

When talking about sharing video, we always refer to Youtube. This site is indeed the most visited video sharing site. You can make Youtube channel and upload regular contents into it. You can upload video with duration up to several hours. But don’t make long duration of video, unless you want to make a documentary film. It is better to divide the type of video based on the duration, starts from 30 seconds video up to 15-20 minutes max. Short but rich content video can be more interesting, and it can be uploaded to various social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Line, Google Plus, and so on.

Marketing Through Website

A business will look more credible when it has a website that contains information of its company profile and explanation of the products they sell. A website doesn’t have to be an online shop platform, but it is a good media to promote the products you have. Website is part of company branding and professionalism.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO

SEO is search engine optimization. It is the way to put your website or products on the top list of search engine page on the internet. For example you are selling sneakers. SEO is needed to make sure that when people enter certain keywords related to ‘sneakers’ in the search engine, your website and products will appear on the top position. There are three important components in SEO, namely keyword research, on page, and off page optimization. Therefore it is necessary to upload regular content with certain keywords that are SEO friendly.

You certainly often hear about startup companies. If you are familiar with Tokopedia, Ruangguru, Cermati, Traveloka, dadupoker or Go-Jek, they are some example of successful startup companies in Indonesia. Following the success of those startups in Indonesia, many people now want to set up their own startups and pour their business ideas.

However, having desire and ideas alone are not enough. One important element to starting a startup is funding. There are several stages in startup funding. A big investor might be able to fund all stages, but sometimes an investor only funds certain stages and the startup company must find other investors to continue with the funding.

Most common types of startup funding

Pre-Seed Funding

Pre-seed funding is the initial stage for startups in order to raise funds. At this stage, the startup company introduces their business model and its potentials. The investors involved in this stage can be family or relatives, angels, and accelerators. Usually, at this pre-seed stage, a startup will receive a small investment that is useful to start a business process.

Seed Funding

Seed Funding

Still classified as the initial stage in funding. At this stage the capital from investors is usually intended to help startups to move from the product development process.

The funding in this stage will generally help in recruiting competent staff and renting or setting up offices. It is also time to pay attention to the early results and identify whether the products has addressed the right market. For investors, it is time to pay attention to whether the startup has been run according to the target and expectation. Investors at this stage usually come from angels, venture capitalists, and accelerators.

Series A

This is the stage where startups already have several flagship products with many customers. However, startups still need to continue with innovation to expand their business. The key to funding at this stage is finding the right venture capitalists and also looking for suitable partners.

Series B

At this stage, startups usually have been 2-4 years old, which is marked by having a regular customer base that generates profits. The purpose of funding at this stage is to maximize market and business expansion.

Series C

At this stage, funding is used to make a massive expansion of products, as well as the market, namely by opening branches, both nationally and internationally. Investors who provide funding at this stage are usually banks, private equity entities, capitalists’ ventures, as well as hedge funds.

Initial Public Offering (IPO)

Initial Public Offering (IPO)

The IPO is the final stage in startup funding. At this stage, startup shares are sold openly on the stock exchange. Normally, a startup needs a minimum of 5-10 years to reach IPO stage.

The application of technology, especially internet, in the business world gives anyone ability to start a business easily and quickly. Especially in the past few years, Indonesia has been in the ‘startup’ euphoria phase where more and more young entrepreneurs create a ‘startup’ business with unlimited innovation and creativity.
The term ‘startup’ also becomes very popular among entrepreneurs, but not it seems many people do not know the meaning of it. Let’s discuss further the definition of startup.

What Is Startup?

What Is Startup

Basically startup is a company that runs under 5 years, or a company that has just started. But around the 2000s since the ‘dot-com’ industry started to be popular, the definition of ‘startup’ in the business world has changed. In the past, startup is a new company, but at present startup company is more about a new business that is applying technological innovation to run its core business and solve a problem in the community.

How Is The Development Of Startup Businesses In Indonesia?

The development of startup businesses in Indonesia is growing excitedly along with the development of technology. There are at least 4 biggest startups from Indonesia, namely Traveloka, Tokopedia, , https://hokiku88.org/ and GO-JEK. Data from Tech In Asia shows that in the second quarter of 2017, the domination of startup in Indonesia come from the E-Commerce and Fintech industry.
Although according to statistics, the number of new startups has decreased in 2017, but it has an increase in the amount of funding for accelerator program in 2017. It brings a positive impact for Indonesia, many investors has begun to see the potential of Indonesian startup businesses, like in the United States or China.

How To Define A Startup Company?

In accordance with the above definition, startup has a disruptive nature in an existing industry. For example in the transportation field in Indonesia. Before the presence of online transportation services, conventional taxi was one of the big players in this industry. Now if there is a new conventional taxi company established, it cannot be called a startup company for its lack of technology, although it is still under 5 years old. But if an online taxi company appears, this is what we call startup company as it runs its core business using technological innovations.

The Differences Between Startup And Online Shop

The Differences Between Startup And Online Shop

Although both type of business mainly working on information technology, those two are completely different things. Even when online shops have website, but they cannot be called startup. According to Forbes, the definition of startup also contains ‘solving problems’ in the community. Like online transportation which come as a solution for practical and convenience way to go places.

Today the internet has become one of the basic needs for humans, especially urban communities around the world including in Indonesia. The number of internet users that continues to increase every year is a very promising potential for internet marketing.

With the internet we can reach more people, therefore marketing through internet is one way to expand market reach. Internet users are now everywhere, even in small towns and countryside areas and through internet marketing we can promote products directly to end users without intermediaries.

Here are some model of the most effective internet marketing you can try to promote your business:

Website or Blog

Website and Blog is basically an online representative of your company or shop. Internet users can visit your site and read everything about your company and the products you sell to build brand awareness. Users can contact you directly through your site and it is advisable to have web or blog admin that is responsible to give quick respond for any inquiries. Your site can also serves as online shop https://sinarmas88.win/ , to make visitors be able to order your products easily. And fortunately, making the website is not as expensive as renting a physical shop for business. There are even several platforms that provide free website.

Marketing Business through Email Marketing

Marketing Business through Email Marketing

When people visit your site, they can subscribe to a newsletter that will be sent to their email regularly. This newsletter contains information of new products, discounts, special offers, and many things. Email marketing is more personal because it reaches users directly to their personal mailbox.

Marketing Through Social Media

Marketing Through Social Media

Almost all internet users have social media accounts. Social media is the most effective platform to market your products. The big social media that you must target include: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube. Each of those social media has different characteristic and it requires different type of content. Having a deep understanding of all of them is a great asset to create effective content that speak well to your target audiences.

Paid Ads

paid advertising

You can always market your products online for free. But it will be more effective if you also make use of paid advertising that will place your ads in certain strategic spots to get more views from internet users. Whenever users click on your ads, it will take them to your site which means the more traffic you get the more chances for them to buy. Some renowned paid ads you can use include Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Youtube Ads, Twitter Ads.

Internet marketing is a method to promote products or services that becomes popular recently and it grows bigger than the traditional marketing. With various option of social media and the way people execute online marketing, it makes internet marketing a broad term to describe. To help you get the idea of how internet marketing works, here are some of the most popular type of internet marketing you need to know about.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is an effort to keep your site on top rank of search engine result. It will make users find you easily and lead them to visit your site or view your products. You can apply SEO (Search Engine Optimization) system in your website, which include having content with certain keywords that are most likely used by people in the search engine. Apart from that you can also use paid search platforms like the one provided by Google called Google Adwords.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is a way of promoting your products or services by generating clicks on the advertisement you put online. Everytime your ads is clicked, you pay a small fee to the search engine. There are two type of PPC, namely search ads and display ads.

Search ads type will put your ads at the top of the search results whenever users enter certain keywords related to your products. You can use PPC platforms such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads. While display ads type allow your ads to be put in various sites from Facebook, Google AdSense, Instagram, Quora Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and many more. For example, your ads will be appeared on users’ Facebook feed when they open their Facebook account even they are not looking for your products. It is a great way to raise product awareness, and next time users need products like you sell they will tend to refer to you.

Social Media

Social Media

Social media is an effective way to promote your products, it can be done organically or paid advertising. You can also either use it for branding or direct sales. The flexibility of social media and its effetiveness makes it the most popular platform for digital marketing. Some big players of social media include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and also Snapchat and Tumblr.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing

It is important to have list of emails of your customers or potential customers. Through email you can share special offers or discounts, catalogue, new release, and many more. The goal of email marketing is to keep your products in the users mind and address them personally.